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BGEN Charles C. Krulak, USMC
General Krulak, a career infantry officer, held a major logistical assignment—as the Commanding General, 2d Force Service Support Group (FSSG) when ordered to prepare for deployment to Southwest Asia for Operation Desert Shield!Desert Storm. No one had ever moved a full FSSG before, in or out of combat. But getting there was only half the fun.
Proceedings: When did you start to crank things up for the
move?
Krulak: In the fall of 1990, the word came down to prepare for a rotation of forces in Saudi Arabia. We would be relieving the 1st FSSG, which had begun to arrive there in August and had stood UP its headquarters early in September. We began to run a series of command-post exercises, to simulate the laydown of the 1st pSSG forces in Southwest Asia. As 1 began to place my people °n the map, the way [Brigadier General] Jim Brabham had his situated on the ground, I decided that if a rotation of forces was ordered, I’d try to take my entire FSSG. Jim had taken a slice of his headquarters from the 1st FSSG in Camp Pendleton and Placed it on top of two composited brigade service support §roups that had entered Saudi Arabia with the 7th and 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigades. He and his people were doing a superb job, but as we continued to run our command-post exercises it became obvious that if we shifted to offensive operations, we "'ould need the more extensive command-and-control capability °f a full FSSG. When the word came that we were going to reinforce the 1st FSSG—and not replace it by rotation—I stuck t0 the same concept of going to Southwest Asia with a full
PSSG.
Once we got there, we established ourselves as a Direct SupPort Command, with the 1st FSSG assuming the general support r°le. Jim Brabham, who was senior to me, became the senior Marine logistician in country. Just before Christmas, Lieutenant General [Walter E.] Boomer directed me to locate a place up n°rth where we could start putting in a logistic support area, big enough to support a division-sized breach of the Iraqi barriers and minefields along the southern border of Kuwait. I went north and found a place called Kibrit, about 50 kilometers inland from ^1 Mish’ab. It was an old, abandoned runway—very desolate, ^fter I reported my find to General Boomer, he gave me the §°-ahead to set up a combat service support area, with seven days of ammo and supplies to support the attack. I sent up my big c<n~th-moving equipment, and by 2 February 1991 Kibrit was ready to go. It had a big fuel farm, the largest ammunition supply P°'nt in Marine Corps history, and all the supplies I MEF needed °r the attack into Kuwait.
r°ceedings: Seven days for a Marine division—that’s a lot of arr>munition . . .
Arulak: In this case, we’re talking about seven days for two v’arine divisions, plus the Army’s armored Tiger Brigade, which was operating with the 2d Marine Division. Those forces generate a very large ammunition requirement, which made this staging operation one heck of a gamble on General Boomer’s part. Why? Because we were staging our ammo far forward of any Marine ground forces. But General Boomer wanted to ensure that he had his support up where it would do him some good when the push into Kuwait began. At the time we started to build up Kibrit, the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions were some 100 kilometers south of us. They did not come north until late January 1991. North of Kibrit, all we had was a screening force of Saudis and Qatars. At the time of the Iraqi move on the abandoned coastal town of Khafji, we were still the northernmost Marines in town, although Major General [William M.] Keys and the 2d Marine Division were by then only ten miles or so to our southwest.
The Iraqi attack on Khafji was three-pronged, and we were in danger of being attacked. I took every bit of ground defense I had and put it around the ammo dump. I felt that I could lose everything but the ammo. If we lost that, our offensive capability would cease to exist. I called General Keys and he sent up some reinforcements from the Tiger Brigade, who screened us for the next few days while the Khafji fight was going on. Those were
Operating a total “push” supply system for an almost totally mechanized force over vast desert distances puts an immense strain on motor transport capability. In one two-week period, the 8th Motor Transport Battalion logged in more than one million miles—double its yearly total back home.
interesting times, as the Chinese might say. [Editor’s Note: ' 'May you live in interesting times” is regarded by the Chinese as a curse.]
Proceedings: So the Kibrit gamble paid off . . .
Krulak: The whole support problem was simple, as long as we were at Kibrit. It was only 50 kilometers from the coast—handy for ammunition resupply. In addition, it had its own water source—a well of its own. But things changed. For the logisti-
The threat of chemical warfare (here, Marines practice decontamination washdown procedures) led to the staging of more than one million gallons of water far forward.
Had such an attack come, water—rather than ammunition—would have become the logistical “driver.”
cians, the war didn’t begin on G-Day—24 February—with the start of the ground assault; it really began about three weeks earlier, when General Boomer decided to breach the Iraqi defenses in two places with two Marine divisions, instead of a single breach with one division.
On or about 4 February, I went to see General Keys. I had been his assistant division commander at one time, so it was no big deal—I just dropped by. Entering his tent, I saw General Boomer, as well. They were looking intently at a map.
General Boomer looked up at me and asked, “What would you think of a two-division breach?”
Well, I had thought about that possibility a lot, as had most of the general officers out there. I went through the laundry list of reasons to do it: complicating the enemy’s defensive problem by attacking on two fronts; avoiding a passage of lines, especially if the sole breaching attack bogged down; making better use of supporting arms—all of the things Marines think about. But I wasn’t telling General Boomer anything he didn’t already know. He looked at me and said, “Yes, I agree and we’re thinking about doing it.”
Then he said, “And I’m thinking about doing it here.” He put his hand on the map—not on the southern part, but the western part—maybe 150 kilometers northwest of Kibrit. Then he said, “Can you support that?” [Editor’s Note: About 40 years earlier, Brigadier General Krulak’s father, then the G-3 (Operations) Officer of the Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, was asked whether the Marines could provide a division to reinforce embattled forces in Korea, as requested by General Douglas Mac Arthur. Then-Colonel (later Lieutenant General) Victor Krulak let his faith in the Marines override the discouraging numbers then at his disposal, and said that the Corps could support. Within three months, the 1st Marine Division, with two of its three regiments comprised mostly of reservists, landed at Inchon and changed the course of the war.}
1 thought to myself, “I’m not sure I can support that!” But what I said was, “I know I can’t support that from Kibrit. I need to find another location for the combat service support area.”
“Okay, go look for another place,” General Boomer said.
I went back to my staff and they went out and looked. They came back and said, “There’s a location called the Gravel Plains, about nine miles west of the Kuwait border, which would be perfect to support General Boomer’s scheme of maneuver,” they said.
We had our new spot. I named it A1 Khanjar—the dagger. We started building this miracle in the desert on 6 February and had it completed by 0100 on 20 February. A1 Khanjar encompassed 11,280 acres—just think of it. The ammunition supply point alone covered 780 acres, with 151 separate cells for ammunition stowage—protected by some 24 miles of berm. One stray artillery round wouldn’t burn up the whole works, as happened more than once in Vietnam. We also had 5,000,000 gallons of fuel on deck at A1 Khanjar, the largest fuel point the Marine Corps had ever seen. We also had 1,000,000 gallons of water stowed there— as well as the third-largest Navy hospital in the world, in terms of operating rooms. In deference to Iraqi artillery capabilities, all of this was dug in—none of it was above ground.
During those 14 days, the 8th Motor Transport Battalion drove more than a million miles. Back at Camp Lejeune, 8th Motors drives roughly half a million miles a year. During those two weeks, the engines of the trucks, the bulldozers, the road grad-
ers, and other key vehicles were never turned off. We just replaced the drivers. Despite the heavy equipment operating tempo, our equipment readiness rate for the period remained above 94%.
Proceedings: No overheating?
Krulak: No. It was just amazing. And during this time frame, we were also assisting the SeaBees in building Khanjar International Airport (in reality, two C-130 airstrips), and helping the air wing build Lonesome Dove, a large helicopter support facility. We also built the Khanjar Expressway, a four-lane superhighway through the desert, running from the breach sites through both division areas, and back to Khanjar. At the end of those two weeks, we had 15 days of supply at Khanjar, three days with each of the direct support groups, and a day with each of the mobile combat service support detachments—in addition to whatever the divisions were carrying themselves.
I’m not a logistician by trade, so I set this up from a infantryman’s viewpoint: “How would a division commander want to be resupplied?”
The answer was fairly obvious. If I shot a bullet, I’d want to reach back and have someone hand another bullet to me, so 1 could stay on the line. I wouldn’t like having to drop my rifle and leave the firing line, in order to go back and get another bullet. I wouldn’t even want to take the time to ask for another bullet; it should just show up automatically. What that implies, of course, is that the guy who supplies me the bullet and the guy who eventually brings up more bullets for him to give to me both must be able to keep up with me, the bullet-shooter. The intent was that the user would never experience any loss of capability. It was a total “push” system.
Proceedings: As opposed to a “pull” system, where the user has to request resupply . . .
Krulak: Total push. Nobody requested anything. Each regiment of the 2d Marine Division had its own mobile combat service support detachment, with a day’s worth of all classes of supply* moving right along with it. Each task force in the 1st Marine Division had the same setup. If a machine gun went down, we wouldn’t keep the gunner waiting while we tried to fix it; we’d just pull a replacement off the rack of machine guns the detachment carried, and hand it to that gunner. The same thing would apply if we lost a wire-guided missile launcher or a light armored vehicle. We had detachments from the maintenance battalion up forward, and they would begin repairing equipment immediately, but no one had to wait while they worked. This responsiveness of the combat service support system was something new—and it worked.
Proceedings: Was your medical support geared to work far forward, in the same way?
Krulak: We had surgical support—trauma specialists—right up with the mobile combat service support detachments. They could sort casualties out and perform immediate lifesaving procedures— the same as regular surgeons, only more capable. Then, with the direct support groups, right up there on the border, we had the casualty collecting and clearing companies in place. Behind them, we had the trauma centers—at A1 Khanjar, Kibrit, and A1 Mish’ab.
We thought that if we were going to take a lot of casualties, it would be during the early stages of the breaching operations, so we kept our surgical support teams up close to the advancing units and planned for overland evacuation of casualties to the rear. As things turned out, we had relatively few casualties and helicopters could in fact fly over the battlefield, so we loaded our medevacs at a forward landing zone—just like Vietnam—and overflew the border medical facilities to take the casualties directly back to A1 Khanjar. It wasn't that far—you could actually see the border from A1 Khanjar.
We were set up to handle a worst-case situation. Each of the mobile support detachments had a collecting and clearing company mounted on trucks. If we started taking casualties, we could have driven up there and set up operating rooms right next to the battle. Everything was mobile and ready to go. Thank God ^e didn’t have to use that capability.
Proceedings: Desert Storm was probably the first time since World War I that Marines faced the possibility of mass casualties from chemical or biological attacks. How did that affect the way you set things up?
Krulak: It played a major role. It required us to stage a lot more Water, because that’s what we were going to use for decontamination. We brought up as many water-carrying vehicles as we could. They weren’t all tanker trucks; they were anything that could carry containers of water. All the mobile support detachments had decon water with them, as did the collecting and clearing companies and the hospitals. Wherever we set up to heat casualties we had decontamination water nearby. If you bring a contaminated casualty into an operating room, you wipe °nt that OR—and we just couldn’t have that.
. Also preparing for the worst case, we had the surgeons, wearing individual protective clothing, practice dealing with contaminated casualties.
Proceedings: How did the combat service support troops hold up under the high tempo of operations?
Krulak: They did fine. The infantrymen—and I’m one—train ln specific tactics for specific missions that have a beginning and end. But every day is the same for a wrench-turner. He might be Working on hard stand back at Camp Lejeune or in the sand of Saudi Arabia, but he still turns that wrench the same way every day. So getting our guys up to speed for their combat service SllPport jobs in the desert was relatively easy compared, say, to Gaining and equipping the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions to make those historic breaches of the Iraqi barriers and minefields.
For us, the really different thing was that nobody had ever mounted out a full force service support group before. Most thought it couldn't be done. But we deployed as a full FSSG to I Jubayl, moved to A1 Mish’ab, from there to Kibrit, from there 0 Al Khanjar, and then on to A1 Jaber, in Kuwait. Then we r°lled back to A1 Khanjar, then to Kibrit, then to A1 Mish’ab, and finally back to Al Jubayl. The whole shooting match—the Hole damned FSSG. That is something to accomplish! feedings: Back at Camp Lejeune, the FSSG would have its hare of female Marines, doing everything from punching type- nters to running heavy earth-moving equipment. As you °ved farther and farther forward in a combat environment, did °u have to make allowances for the females, and leave them in ‘he rear?
Krulak: We took all of them with us. They were magnificent. The first Marine out of the 2d FSSG to be recommended for a Bronze Star medal was a woman. My G-l [personnel officer] was a female lieutenant colonel; my G-2 [intelligence officer] was a female major. The noncommissioned officer in charge of our communications center was a woman; 50% of the communications watch sections were women. We had female platoon commanders. After dark on the first day of the ground attack, ten of my female truck drivers went through the breach to bring back enemy prisoners, so they actually cleared the breach ahead of some of our hard-charging infantry units. I had a couple hundred female Marines up north with me, and none of them ever shied away from anything. None of them went home on emergency leave—zero! None of them got pregnant in Southwest Asia— zero! The women, as well as the Marine Corps Reservists, did a
Assisted by Marine Corps engineers, Navy SeaBees (here, a convoy from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Five) carved out two C-130 airstrips, a large helicopter support facility, and a four-lane superhighway linking both divisions to Al Khanjar.
truly phenomenal job.
I’m a firm believer in the capabilities of our female Marines to perform under pressure. I’m not saying that they should be infantrymen, but there is a role for them in combat—certainly in the combat service support arena. They did a great job. Proceedings: Is there a question I didn’t ask that you would like to answer?
Krulak: F ve been an infantry officer for 26 of my 27 years in the Marine Corps. But as a temporary logistician, 1 have never been prouder of any group of men and women than my FSSG. Nobody who was not there will ever know what it took to build the support area at Al Khanjar. General Boomer had never seen anything like it. It was so big that you could not see from one end to the other; it faded into the horizon. And the Marines who put that together in two weeks didn’t stop to rest on their oars; they went through the breach with the combat units and continued to do their thing.
You can talk all you want about the air and ground campaigns, and—God bless them—those warriors did a magnificent job. I’d never begin to take anything from them. Ten years from now, however, when historians and strategists and tacticians study the Gulf War—what they will study most carefully will be the logistics. This was a war of logistics.